The normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is based in the mutual interests of both country’s elites, but this doesn’t mean Israel is closer to being accepted in the region.

Many in the Arab world are saying that the normalization of Israeli-UAE relations demonstrates the failure of “Arab nationalism,” but Nada Elia says this idea was invented to begin with and was never a true basis for solidarity.

Tunisian leaders have ignored popular demands and secretly normalized relations with Israel. Palestinian solidarity activists can counter these moves by targeting Israeli companies that sell Tunisia spyware and irrigation technology.

Even though Israel is surrounded by Arab countries, rules over millions of Palestinians, and that over half of the Israeli Jewish population originates from Arabic-speaking countries, more literature is translated from Swedish into Hebrew than from Arabic each year. The Forum of Arabic-Hebrew Translators seeks to change this through promoting suppressed Palestinian narratives to an Israeli audience. It is “a political model […] to decolonize the colonial relations between the languages,” co-founder Yehouda Shenhav explains. To “serve as a model for shared sovereignty in Israel-Palestine in the Middle East, so as to be a model for politics itself”.